Abstract
<p>Oriented around efficiency, civic technology primarily aims to remove barriers by automating and streamlining processes of government. While removing barriers is vital in many matters of governance, should it always be the aim of civic technology? In our ongoing ethnographic research to understand the work of community engagement performed by public officials in local government, we have observed how this orientation around efficiency in civic technology can inadvertently create distance in the relationships between citizens and governments. In this article, we discuss how an orientation around trust could open a space for civic technology that primarily aims to close distance in the relationships between citizens and public officials. We do so by first providing an account of how trust functions in the work of public officials performing community engagement, calling attention to where and when efficiency is at odds with the importance of relationship building between public officials and citizens. We build on ethnographic findings and a series of co-design activities with public officials to develop three strategies that operate under the logic of trust: historicizing engagement, focusing on experience, and mediating expectations. In all, by focusing on trust and the relational work of closing distance, civic technology can move towards addressing the growing crisis in confidence being faced in democracies.</p>
Highlights
This article draws from our experience leading one of the Citi Foundation’s Living Cities City Accelerator cohorts in the city of Atlanta, Georgia
We begin by discussing the work undertaken by public officials to build civic relationships which exposes the logic of trust within the wider landscape of community engagement
We argued each dimension of distance between public officials and citizens presents uncertainty that trust needs to overcome
Summary
This article draws from our experience leading one of the Citi Foundation’s Living Cities City Accelerator cohorts in the city of Atlanta, Georgia. Our role was to lead research efforts which involved collecting interviews from community members and public officials, as well running a series of co-design activities in order to develop insights for improving the work of community engagement throughout the city (Corbett & Le Dantec, 2018a, 2018b) It is within this work we observed two logics: one of efficiency and one of trust—each of which provide a distinct orientation for civic technology. The perspective from city council points to the logic of trust reflected by the concerns of how the system created distance in his relationships with constituents by removing points of contact This raises a series of questions: do opportunities for contact—even through the mundane work of being able to solve a problem with a water bill or fix a pot hole— provide the building blocks for civic relationships? We provide three strategies to achieve this: historicizing engagement, focusing on experience, and mediating expectations
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